642 Things to Write About: Writing Prompt #1

For graduation, I acquired a lovely book called 642 Things to Write About, which was compiled by the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. As a direct result of this, I have now challenged my fellow Word Nerds to respond to each prompt as they are posted on a weekly basis. I will respond in the body of this post, while I ask everyone else to respond in the comments. This week, the prompt is the following:

Ooooooo!!! This is awesome, Pearl! I like the “Whoops” at the end; that was hilarious.
One question I wasn’t totally clear on: did she drop her book & he was trying to help her, or what happened there?

I was leaving it somewhat open to the imagination. The way I was picturing it, they were in some sort of lecture or school class, and he was some guy who’d never sat by her in class before, and he’d set his textbook right next to hers, so when the class was over and they were getting ready to go, they just happened to reach for roughly the same place at the same time.

Both you ladies did a lovely job. Frankly though I feel that you two took the easy ones. Love and death. (No, I’m not about to do life… I’m not that much of an optimist.) Well… here goes nothing.

‘A Thought That Came And Went In A Second’

Have you ever thought about the smell of dust? That particular odor that when struck with that particular chord in your nose, sends you into spasms and fits of nonsensical sneezing. That musty, old sort of smell that graces the halls of great places almost too familiar to be accident. The faint scent of burning satisfaction you can almost catch a whiff of before you set to dusting an old room.

Well, you’re supportive. And hey, at least I acknowledged that I was taking the easy road.

Yours is fantastic, of course. It sounds like it should be the opening paragraphs of a mystery novel. There’s a young girl, working odd jobs like cleaning old mansions inhabited by creepy old people to pay her college tuition. And one day, while dusting in a century-old library, she stumbles across…

This was a really, really cool idea, Aloisa! I love seeing how different people’s brains work in relation to prompts! To me, though, the ending was a little bit abrupt. It almost felt…self-conscious, I guess? Like, I was just starting to get in to it, and I was really appreciating the description and everything, and then it just…stopped. Like I said, I love the idea, the writing was good, but just as I was starting to think about the smell of dust, you just kind of…dismissed it, you know? Now I’m going to be thinking about the smell of dust whenever I clean my room, though, haha. :-D

And, just for the record, I see nothing easy about writing about two of the most philosophically challenging topics in the world. :-D Just sayin’.